Clyde Drexler: From Elm Tree Drive to Springfield

By Dale Robertson |
February 12, 2013

Clyde Drexler's glide to the NBA, All-Star games, a championship in Houston with the Rockets and eventually the Hall of Fame almost didn't get off the ground after rough starts at Sterling High School and the University of Houston.

Clyde Drexler, the home-grown Hall of Famer acclaimed by the NBA as one of the 50 greatest players ever, learned to dribble a basketball in the driveway and back patio of his home on Elm Tree Drive, just a few minutes southeast of the University of Houston. It was love at first bounce.

"I was 8, 9, 10 years old when I started getting serious," Drexler said, "and I never stopped. My friends and I, we played every day outdoors in the sun on uncovered courts, even in the summer. You'd see the same thing today. It wasn't anything special. It was just what we did."

Asked if he remembers the precise moment when the basketball "light" went on for him, he laughed, answering, "I don't know if the light was ever off."

Football may be the big dog in Texas sports, but pickup hoops in Houston's parks and public gyms has long enjoyed exalted status. Remember Fonde Recreation Center in its heyday? Drexler already was headed to college and on the cusp of Phi Slama Jama fame before he was deigned worthy of being chosen for a team there.

Drexler's long, wandering road to Fonde began in the early 1970s when his big brother James, who was in high school and needed a break from working at the family's barbeque restaurant, headed out the door on Saturday mornings to find a game. Clyde started tagging along, although James admits at first he'd sometimes order him to go home, even flinging a rock or two at him.

"Anywhere the best competition was," Drexler said, "that's where we went."

He didn't get into games all that much at first, but he learned by sitting and watching.

"These guys my brother was playing with weren't pros or anything, just weekend warriors like James," Drexler said. "But they knew how to play."

When he turned 13 and began to grow, the opportunities to prove himself with "the big kids" increased. He wasn't yet "Clyde the Glide" or "Chili Clyde" - nicknames he acquired as his skills evolved - but at least he'd get to play a little.

"Somebody would get tired so they'd holler, 'Hey, little man, come on over,' " Drexler said. "I'd be ready to go. But you had to be strong. If you went to a basketball court back then, you knew there were going to be fights. On the basketball court, there was always somebody who was feeling a little frisky. If some guys lost, it would get a little crazy. But if they see you're ready, they wouldn't bother you."

'Clyde! Is that you?'

Drexler sprouted nearly 7 inches between his freshman and sophomore years at Sterling High School and finally dunked for the first time on the bent rims at the Albert Thomas courts, admitting, "It was a big moment. I'd been trying for years. I'd spent most of that summer in New Orleans (where he was born) and I was about 6-6 when I got back. The guys in my own neighborhood didn't recognize me. 'They go, 'Clyde! Is that you?' "

But he was out sick the week Sterling's head basketball coach, Clifton Jackson, held his varsity tryouts, and only after friends interceded on his behalf was Drexler given a makeup opportunity.

It didn't go well.

"Coach made us do calisthenics before we practiced," he said, "and I couldn't do the original 25 pushups he wanted. I mean, I was cheating on those. I'm growing like wildfire and I'm not that strong. I'm just a floppy puppy. But after we get through, Coach says, 'Hey, new boy, come on up here and give me 25 more (pushups) for being late. I did about six. That was it. He says, 'You come into my gym late and you're out of shape, too? Get out of here.' That's right. He threw me out. Told me to go home."

Drexler vowed never to play for Jackson. In fact, he had decided to transfer to Jones or Worthing the next year. He didn't attend a single Sterling basketball game all season. But he kept stats for the football team, then made the baseball team, starting at first base. He also became a focal point of the daily lunchtime pickup games in the Sterling gym, more than holding his own against the graduating seniors, whom he described as being "big, strong guys with beards and, some of them, families.

"They'd had a real good team," Drexler said. "I think they won the Jaycee tournament. They didn't need me. But I showed them some things in those lunch games and they were like, 'My goodness, why didn't you play for us this year?' I told them, 'You know why. You saw what Coach did to me.' They said, 'Yeah, but we didn't know you were this good.'

"Anyway, it was always a show. One day Coach came into the gym. I don't think my team lost a game, and when we were done, the seniors put me on their shoulders and tried to carry me over to him. I told them, 'Oh, no, we don't see eye to eye. I'm not playing for that guy.' I got my books and left. But when I got home, guess who's at the house, talking to my mother?

"She looks at me and says, 'You're not playing? Oh yes you are going to play.' And Coach and I became best friends. From that day on, we never had a problem."

Just like Dr. J

James Drexler's favorite player was Julius Erving. Ever the doting little brother, Clyde decided "Dr. J" would be his favorite player, too. He began emulating Erving's moves, and by the time he was a 6-7 high school junior, he could replicate them pretty well. Around Houston that summer, Drexler said he began building "a little cult following. I went from being 'that guy' to Chili Clyde and Clyde the Glide. We'd hit two or three parks every day. We'd stop at Burger King or Jack in the Box after one, then go find another game.

"By car or by bike, it didn't matter. I'd get there. You'd see me on my bicycle, carrying my basketball."

The payoff came in the form of a scholarship to UH, two Final Four visits as a Phi Slama Jama Cougar and a 15-season NBA career, capped by the Rockets' championship in 1995, when he was reunited in Houston with Hakeem Olajuwon.

"My experience playing with my brother and his friends, Coach (Jackson) and then Guy Lewis (who, ironically, hadn't heavily recruited him) taught me resilience and how to stay humble," Drexler said. "Sometimes, you've got to watch and learn. For me, getting there was hard. I had to work hard. Kids need to know that nobody's going to put a golden staircase in front of you. I'd become a high-jumpin' David Thompson/Dr. J kind of player, but only a few people outside my area seemed to know it even when I got to college. My first day of practice, Guy put me on the third team, which meant I was just sitting on the side. I was (upset), already thinking about transferring.

"But Rob Williams, whose first team was getting crushed, went over to Guy and asked for me to be on his team. So Guy hollers at me, 'Hey you, turn your jersey over and get your butt out here.' Right away Rob starting throwing me alley-oop passes from mid-court and I was throwing down dunks and getting all the rebounds. To make a long story short, I never left the first team."